Roots of Depression

If you’re looking for the roots of depression, you may have to look further back in the past than you might think.

That’s an interesting takeaway from a recent study of 100 people who experienced depressive episodes as adults. As reported in The Atlantic, researchers found among those adults, people who had undergone trauma early in their lives were less resilient than people who had not. The people who had suffered early trauma (such as the loss of a parent) were more vulnerable to depression following later events involving interpersonal loss. And when they fell into depression as an adults, those episodes tended to be triggered by events that were less severe than those inducing depression in adults who hadn’t been hit by trauma in their youth.

The Atlantic reported these results as if one should be surprised that people’s lives as adults are affected by their early experiences. But in fact, researchers and practicing psychologists have long known about the importance of a person’s early experience in understanding their adult emotional life. Putting it bluntly, you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to figure out that our childhood leaves an imprint on how we behave when we’re grown up. When people experience loss as children, the experience is often overwhelming; they commonly haven’t yet developed the emotional strength to overcome it. When another crisis comes along years later, it can be like having a new wound before the old one has entirely healed; people are more vulnerable to the next injury. Moreover, they may rely on whatever imperfect or faulty coping mechanisms they used as children -- behaviors that are no more effective than they were the first time around.

And yet, many people who experienced major emotional setbacks as children berate themselves, if, as adults, they are tipped into a depressive episode by a minor problem. They blame themselves for their emotional weakness. Their difficulties can be exacerbated by psychotherapists who minimize the significance of their past; while some psychologists (myself included) consider the past to be an important element (but by no means the only factor) in understanding people’s present behavior, others see little value in exploring the past. Perhaps more research like this will increase awareness about the past’s importance, enabling people to use it to address present-day issues more effectively.